The UAA volleyball team upended the nation's 10th-ranked team Tuesday night, a victory that seemed improbable for any number of reasons.
The Seawolves were playing on the road against NCAA Division II powerhouse Western Washington, which is always tough at home in Bellingham. They were playing their fifth match in six days, a stretch that saw them fly from California to Anchorage on Saturday night, then from Anchorage to Seattle on Monday afternoon. They were running a new offense. And, they lost the first two sets.
UAA overcame all of that to beat the Vikings 17-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-20, 15-7 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference season opener for both teams.
"I think it's a great victory for us, because we came back from 0-2. The girls are still hungry to get better," UAA coach Chris Green said by phone. "Game 5 was probably the best we played in this match."
Katelynn Zanders and Julia Mackey each ripped four kills to help the Seawolves (7-2 overall, 1-0 GNAC) dominate the decisive set.
Zanders finished with a match-high 25 kills and Mackey totaled 15 on a night when UAA debuted a new offense.
The Seawolves went from using two setters to one, a move that may have contributed to early hitting woes but ended with sophomore Morgan Hooe dishing out 53 assists while running an attack that saw UAA out-hit Western Washington .167 to .141.
In the first set, the Seawolves hit a dismal minus-.042 and had more hitting errors (10) than kills (eight). In the fifth set, they hit .385 with 12 kills and two errors.
"This is the first time we ran a 5-1 offense," Green said. "The first time you run something new in a game, it can be an adjustment, and maybe that's part of the reason (for the slow start). We just weren't offensively doing the job. All those errors just kill you. We had some silly errors, and we were hitting balls out of bounds and into the net.
"To their credit, we cleaned it up. We got better as the match went along."
During intermission after the second set, the Seawolves regrouped.
"It was not a screaming thing in the locker room, though it could've been," Green said. "We just asked them to get out of their funk and clean it up and be better communicators."
Green said Zanders, who made 70 attack attempts, benefited from a rotation that often put her across the net against Western Washington setter Kristina Tribley. "She was able to get some swings against a shorter blocker," he said.
Hooe, meanwhile, held her own at the net, getting a hand in three of UAA's 12 blocks. The Seawolves outblocked Western Washington 12-9 and had 64 kills to the Vikings' 52.
"The disadvantage of a 5-1 is you have a shorter setter in the front row, but Morgan did a good job and slowed balls down," Green said.
Both teams racked up more than 100 digs, with Quinn Barker (34) and Mackey (30) leading UAA.
Samantha Hutchinson came up with 42 digs and three players hit double-figures in kills for Western Washington (7-3, 0-1).
The crazy schedule continues on Wednesday for the Seawolves, who will drive to Canada for a match against Simon Fraser, which improved to 7-2 Tuesday by beating UAF in three sets. The Wednesday match will be the sixth in seven days for the Seawolves, a demanding stretch that started last week with four matches in three days in a California tournament that ended Saturday. They flew home that night and were back on a plane Monday, headed to Seattle.
The team returns to Anchorage for two GNAC matches at the Alaska Airlines Center — a Saturday match against Montana State-Billings and a Monday match against Seattle Pacific.
Reach Beth Bragg at bbragg@alaskadispatch.com
Alaska Dispatch Publishing